


Hidden

by VeritySilvers (orphan_account)



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/M, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-18
Updated: 2012-01-18
Packaged: 2017-10-29 18:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/VeritySilvers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bethany Hawke and Knight-Captain Cullen are secretly married.  How would this work?  Another fill from the Dragon Age II kink meme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The original prompt was posted 9 Jan 2012: _OP is shamelessly in love with the trope of secret relationships, secret marriages most of all. How would this happen with Cullen/Bethany? How would it work? How long does it last? What happens in the aftermath of the Gallows siege?_ Here's my answer!

He’s still not entirely sure he hasn’t simply dreamed everything.

There are no external signs to mark the change, of course: there are no rings, no necklaces, no bracelets. There aren’t even tokens: handkerchiefs or brooches or something small and innocuous that might take on deeper meaning when gifted from a lover. There are certainly no public declarations: he does not give her his name, and she does not receive any special favors.

Only three people know that they are married: Knight-Captain Cullen, Enchanter Bethany, and Grand Cleric Elthina, who married them.

He can’t even remember the entire ceremony clearly. It was simply the two of them standing together in his office, steps away from his desk and the rotation schedules and orders awaiting his attention. He’d been in full armor, he’s fairly sure, as he’d been technically on duty; she’d worn her usual daily robe. He remembers the whole thing in bits and pieces: the Grand Cleric’s soft smile as she joined their hands together, the way Bethany’s fingers trembled and then firmed against his hands, the way his heart swelled as he looked at the mage who stood beside him as his bride. He doesn’t remember the words the Grand Cleric spoke to bless their union, and he barely remembers speaking his own assent to their marriage.

But he recalls Bethany’s sweet voice as she whispered her own pledge, and the bright light in her eyes as she willingly tied her life to his; he remembers the fire in his blood when she said her vows aloud, in the eyes of the Maker, and became his forever.

The memory helps him know that he has not merely dreamed the whole thing, so he revisits it often. He wishes he could visit Bethany as often, but the powers of the Knight-Captain are not so strong as to keep an entire Circle – mages, templars, merchants, and assorted personnel – from noticing if he simply moved her into his own rooms. So he lives apart from his wife, in the same fortress yet separated by far more than mere walls.

It would mean his death if the Knight-Commander discovered their union. Cullen is sure of that. His death, and worse than that for Bethany; so he is silent and endures. Meredith’s strictness, he believes, is a precaution needed in a city gone mad. Once Kirkwall has settled, she will relax her iron grip on the Gallows and Cullen can proceed with his cautious plans. He will gain allies, one by one, to vouch for Bethany’s behavior and innocence – Ser Thrask seems promising…

He knows it is impossible, but Cullen hopes all the same. He’d despaired, until he’d known her: he’d suffered at the hands of blood mages in Ferelden, and had seen the madness their power constantly tempted them towards. He’d arrived in Kirkwall despairing of the goodness of mages, convinced that each secretly yearned towards blood magic and despotic power.

Bethany was his light and his salvation. He’d been the one to oversee her Harrowing – the Knight-Commander trusted her to no one else, a grown apostate and powerful enchanter. He’d expected her to fight him, to lash out pull forth power from the blood beneath her veins, and instead she’d looked at him with gentle, somehow relieved eyes, and passed through the Harrowing with simple inherent grace.

It had been enough to intrigue him, and he’d watched her closely – first in suspicion, of course, but then in wonder. Here was a mage who had come late to a Circle, who had lived years of life with the temptation of demons and not succumbed. Instead she submitted to the Templars when they came for her, professed herself glad to no longer hide, and became nearly the perfect example of an obedient mage.

Was it any wonder she’d fascinated him? A mage, yes, but beautiful and devout and honest and pure.

He doesn’t know when his observation became habit, and then pleasure; he doesn’t truly remember when she first spoke with him as a friend rather than as a Templar.

He remembers kissing her for the first time in the cold shades of the Gallow walls, her back pressed against the grey stones and his arms trapping her between them, her lips soft and warm beneath his and her hands gentle on his cheeks.

In years past he’d have worried about being somehow enchanted, or that he was being controlled; with her, there was no such worry. Instead there was the worry of discovery, the desperate wish for a secluded space, the fervent prayer for just a little more time together.

He’d asked her to marry him without thought to the consequences or the impossibility of it; she’d agreed with a sad smile and he’d known she never expected to be able to stand before him as his wife. But Ser Thrask had mentioned something about the Grand Cleric’s sympathies in one of his daily reports, and the seed had been planted – and, in time, sown.

Now Cullen stands amongst what that kernel of thought had harvested, and treasures the knowledge that in the courtyard he guards sits the woman he loves. His wife sits at the feet of another man, watching her instructor intently as he teaches some finer point of magery. Her face is calm, composed, attentive – she is the model student.

Only Cullen knows what that face looks like flushed with pleasure, how her head tips back and her back arches up as he moves within her. He knows what touches make her gasp out his name, and where to press her flesh so that his name stutters on her lips and turns into an incoherent cry. He’s felt her fingers, now delicately folded in her lap, rake down the skin of his back and grip his hips with a strength he’d not suspected.

He’s seen her cry, tears of bittersweet joy and sorrow, and he’s tasted her love when she’s kissed him in the minutes and hours they can steal together from the rest of the world.

But there are no signs of their marriage, and only three people know of it, and so sometimes Cullen wonders if he’s merely dreamed the whole thing. He’s able to see her alone so rarely, and he dares not speak of it to anyone, and when all he has is his memories, it’s hard to convince himself that she truly does love him, that she truly is his, that she truly has sworn herself to him completely.

But then Bethany’s lesson ends, and her instructor stands briskly. Bethany stands as well, and as she does, turns to look about the courtyard. Her gaze slips across the entrance to rest briefly on him, and she meets his eyes – there is nothing suspicious in her look, nothing to arouse the curiosity of a paranoid Templar. She is merely a mage acknowledging the Templar guarding the courtyard; her eyes are beautiful but impersonal, and he gives her a cordial nod when he sees her glance.

She inclines her head in response, and looks away, and Cullen’s heart leaps as her hands reach for each other.

It’s a habit of Bethany’s, now, a silly little habit that no one else has ever really noticed. She’s always held her hands together as she stands in place, slender fingers plucking at each other or running along themselves in her only real show of nervous energy. Most mages do something similar – the Gallows is not a comfortable place to be under the watchful eyes of Templars, and most mages demonstrate their nerves somehow, from pacing to playing with their hair. Bethany folds her fingers together, or holds one hand with the other.

But now she does so differently. Now her right hand goes to hold her left, and her right thumb comes to rest on her bare left ringfinger, rubbing against a ring she isn’t wearing – a ring she can’t wear.

Bethany touches skin that would be hidden by the wedding ring he wishes he could have given her, and Cullen’s heart constricts in his chest even as his breathing comes easier.

He is not dreaming; Bethany is his wife; no one knows but the Grand Cleric.

It is both the most beautiful and the most terrible part of his life.


	2. Chapter 2

Bethany considers herself a thief.

She’s no common cut-purse, of course: she may have lived in Lowtown, but she never quite stooped to that level. She doesn’t take anything that the owners may not live without. She only steals from a very specific group of people, after all.

Bethany steals from the Templars, and has since she was a child.

She stole herself, after all, for isn’t that was being an apostate means? She refused to allow the Templars to have her, and kept away from Circles wherever they traveled. Her family helped her, of course, and taught her how to take from the Templars under their very noses in Lothering: one young mage, female, of good family.

So she stole years from the Templars, years of freedom and family and fear.

When the Templars came to collect the price for those years – the penalty for stealing nearly two decades of a mage’s life – Bethany considered everything she’d stolen, and gone willingly enough. The price had to be paid, after all.

She sometimes wonders what her life would be like if Garrett had let her accompany him down the Deep Roads. Would she have moved into the lovely mansion he’d bought back? Would she still be able to sit in the Hanged Man to listen to Varric’s stories, to invite Aveline over for supper, to visit Anders in his clinic?

Sometimes she wonders darker things – if she’d have survived life underground with darkspawn, if she could have carried her own weight and fought whatever enemies made Garrett nearly a month late home.

But she puts all that aside: she stole her life from the Templars, and they finally claimed it back. Her life is in the Gallows now, where she spends her days learning, teaching, and watching – all under the wary eyes of the Templars.

She probably should have stopped stealing from them when she arrived, and for a time she did – she was so relieved to be in a place where she would be kept safe, where she couldn’t inadvertently kill ones she loved or innocents by wavering in her willpower. She’d been relieved and afraid and six different types of alone, and so she’d stopped stealing and buckled down on herself.

She’d turned into a model mage. Templars still frightened her a bit, of course – two decades of ingrained fear is hard to fight – but now she knows that they are here to guard her, from others and herself, and finds them to be staunch allies. There are those who fear her, of course; there are even those who hate her. She learned quickly who is honest and who is power-hungry; who is cruel and who is merely strict.

And that is when she started stealing again.

She steals time, as she did before, but more, and worse; this time she doesn’t merely steal from the Templars.

She steals a Templar.

Cullen is her greatest prize, a stolen Templar, and for him she risks tranquility to steal yet more minutes and hours with him. She pilfers seconds, lagging at the end of groups to stay in the room he’s in; she hordes minutes they sit together in the Chantry like a rich woman collects jewels; she cherishes the hours they spend together in the dark like a mother loves her children.

Bethany has spent her life stealing from the Templars, and it is surprisingly easy to continue to do so even living in the Gallows.

She’s gained a reputation here: the other mages think her quiet and sweet. The Templars consider her respectful and honest. Everyone believes her to be dutiful and trustworthy, which is why she is usually the one chosen to carry messages. So she can claim business in Templar offices honestly, and if occasionally she lingers longer in Cullen’s office than necessarily needed to deliver schedules, no one notices.

She rarely steals more than minutes of his time. Sometimes she steals a full hour; very rarely, more than one. He is eager to be stolen, which is the best part; he loves her as she loves him, and will attempt to steal her away in turn.

He stole her for a scant five minutes once as she delivered a message for Ser Thrask to his office, and married her.

Bethany is a thief, and it is glorious: her Templar stole her heart, so she took his in repayment.

It’s not an easy life, of course. She sees her husband rarely – once a day if she is lucky. Discovery means death for him, so she is careful to act as she should in view of others. Once a week – perhaps – she has him to herself. Only then can she kiss him, mold herself against his solid form and curse the armor of his station for keeping him from her touch.

She is a wife of two years, and has only stolen six nights with her husband.

But she watches Cullen step out onto the stairway that leads down to the courtyard, and her heart still leaps. He is her rock in an otherwise shifting world: the rules for mages are tightening and their times together shrinking, but he never falters. His love has remained as entrenched as his friendship, and as he comes down the stairs, Bethany forces herself to look away as she has many times before.

Instead, there is a creaking of armor, and she looks up with only half-feigned astonishment as Cullen stops beside her. “Mage Bethany,” he greets her, and she is so flabbergasted by being directly approached by him that it takes her a moment to realize he’s waiting on a response.

“Yes, Knight-Captain?” she says at last, and the half-smile this pause should have produced doesn’t come. Instead, he very cordially invites her to his office, and she very courteously accepts.

He shuts the door, which should gladden her heart – time alone with her husband – and somehow doesn’t. Dread spirals through her as he leads her to a chair and then, armor and all, kneels on the floor before her, his head bowed and his gauntleted hands gently resting on her knees.

“Bethany,” he murmurs, his voice soft and beloved and off.

“What’s happened?” she asks dully, her hands coming to rest in his hair, touching the fine skin of the back of his neck. “Cullen…?”

He takes a deep breath, and tells her how her mother died.


	3. Chapter 3

Meredith is a burned-out husk of molten armor and charred delusion, and still Cullen is afraid of her.

He very deliberately does not look at her remains; instead, he looks over at the man who probably, yet again, saved Kirkwall.

Garrett Hawke is panting slightly, and Cullen isn’t surprised – most of them still are. Statues come to life, lyrium searing a line of fire into the sky, the Fade rent open and spirits let loose upon the world… even if the morning hadn’t been fueled by blood mage and ambition, even if the afternoon hadn’t seen his commander maddened by corrupted lyrium, even if the city still stood and the revolt was over, Cullen is sure this would still count as the worst day of his life.

He has not seen Bethany since Orsino pulled the mages into the Gallows. She lived then, he is sure of it – desperately sure, so sure he’s starting to doubt if he truly saw her at her brother’s side those mere hours ago. But while magic poured down on the courtyard as Meredith gave in to her cruel ambition and strict certainty, Cullen has seen no sign of Bethany and does not yet know if she lives.

Garrett turns to him, and the Templars around him - _his_ Templars, Cullen realizes; he’s the highest ranked officer – take several steps backward. Cullen wants to do so, for a different reason: Garrett Hawke’s eyes are the same golden shade as his sister’s, and it is a physical pang to see them. But he holds his ground.

Garrett speaks first, as his companions start to cross the courtyard to return to his side. “Looks like you’re going to be in charge of the clean-up,” he says, and Cullen has the feeling he was striving for levity. He just sounds tired, instead.

“Yes,” Cullen says, and looks around at the sheer chaos of the courtyard: jumbled statues lie where they fell, in pieces and whole; Templars and mages and even guardsmen lie slaughtered and wounded on the field of battle. “Thank you for your aid with the Knight-Commander.”

Garrett’s laugh is more of a bark, exhausted and amazed. “Yeah,” he says, and then squints up at the smoke-colored sun. “I shouldn’t stay here.”

Someone behind him rumbles, “No shit,” in an equally exhausted tone – a dwarf? Cullen isn’t sure.

Cullen chooses his words carefully. “What of the mages of the Circle?” he asks. “Do any remain that require aid?”

“No,” Garrett shoots back, and Cullen’s heart falls to his feet.

Then a light voice speaks. “Garrett,” she chides her brother, sliding around a partially glowing elf and a tattooed Dalish woman.

Bethany’s robes are singed and bloody, and he can see her fingers are bruised, but her staff is ready at her back and her eyes are clear as she comes to stand before him. “We locked most of the children in the upper floors of the tower,” she tells him, “and we left behind two of the senior apprentices to guard them and the wounded. If you could send someone to make certain of their safety?”

“Don’t tell the Templars, Bethany, honestly…” Garrett’s voice is a groan.

Behind her, more mages are stepping forward out of the wrecked columns: no Orsino, he sees; no senior enchanters. Just mages, ragged and bleeding and exhausted, faithfully coming back to the Templars led by one that would destroy them, led by the apostate. There are so few of them, and with the phylacteries in the ruin of the Gallows, he is sure that there are many who have escaped the Circle. Still, there are perhaps twelve mages who follow Bethany towards the Templars; follow, he realizes, is the right word, as they look to her as his Templars look to him.

“Yes,” Cullen says, accepting her request and her position of leader of the surviving mages. He turns to his side. He’s not yet sure which of his own men have survived, who can be trusted and who believes as Meredith did, but he sees a familiar face. “Ser Dareth, take five men and investigate. Any mages still surviving…” he hesitates, looking at the lines of exhaustion on Bethany’s face. “Just bring everyone who can be moved here,” he says finally. “We’ll sort things out here.”

“You’re not going to perform the Right of Annulment,” Hawke demands. “You can’t. Mages should be free to choose their own lives.”

Cullen feels a headache coming on. “Mages,” he says shortly, “should be guarded from themselves and from others by the Templars so that their magic does not rule them. But no,” he adds sharply as Garrett draws more breath to argue, “I’m not going to use the Right. Any mage who has survived today without using blood magic has more than proven their refusal of temptation.”

There is a small murmur of approval behind him from his Templars, and new hope kindled in the eyes of the mages cautiously coming forward. Garrett looks suspicious, but then his sister says his name sharply, and he looks away. “Well,” he says. “Use the estate.”

Cullen isn’t sure he’s heard correctly. “What?”

Garrett gestures behind him, vaguely toward Hightown. “I’ve got this estate,” he says. “And I’m not sticking around after this mess. Use it to house the mages. It’s probably not destroyed.”

“Hawke,” a companion says in a low voice, “where are we going instead?”

“It doesn’t matter yet,” he answers, and looks at Cullen with suddenly clear eyes. “The Chantry’s destroyed, the Gallows are all but ripped to shreds, and the Knight-Commander’s gone insane and got fried for her troubles. Half the mages I led here are already fleeing Kirkwall, and I intend to do the same.”

“You’re the Champion,” Cullen says drily. “I doubt the people want you gone.”

Garrett looks around him, and then shrugs. “It’s necessary,” he says. “As was this. But I don’t envy you the clean-up.”

He turns then, to his little group of followers. “You don’t have to come with me,” he begins, but even Cullen can see that his companions are having none of it.

“Please,” a dark-haired wench in very little clothing drawls out. She steps forward, hooks her hands into the straps of Garrett’s armor, and kisses him so thoroughly Cullen is impressed despite himself. “Like that’s going to work on any of us.”

Garrett grins, and Cullen sees why this man is the city’s beloved Champion, why so many risk everything to fight and follow at his side. There’s a force of personality there, the promise of change. Destiny, Cullen thinks, and remembers the Warden of Ferelden and the Circle Tower he left behind years ago.

Garrett looks back at Cullen. “See you around,” he says, and then, the words that make Cullen shift his stance, “I’m taking Bethany, and you can’t stop me.”

“She’s a mage of the Circle, and in my care,” he grits out. “She stays.”

“Oh, for the Maker’s sake,” he hears Bethany mutter, and then she deliberately steps between her husband and her brother.

“Garrett,” she says decisively. “Good luck. I’ll miss you.”

The shock on her brother’s face is delicious to see, and Cullen very nearly doesn’t stop his smirk.

“But –” he starts, and then the wench interrupts him with a little laugh.

“Ooh, our little Bethany’s all grown up now, hasn’t she?”

Bethany flushes quite prettily, but doesn’t move. Cullen looks at Garrett once more and feels that stirring of change the man seems to breathe – the feel that he carries fate with him casually, that he has more yet to accomplish in this world before he’s done shaking things up.

And some of that sense of destiny must affect him, too, buoyed off of Garrett’s presence, because Cullen steps forward to take Bethany’s hand. “Bethany will stay with me,” he says clearly, his voice quiet and echoing across the courtyard. “And I’ll see that no one harms my wife for what she is.”

Bethany’s fingers curl into his, warm even against the leather palm of his gauntlet, and it gives Cullen the courage to stand straight before his Templars and the surviving mages who are now his responsibility.

Garrett holds his gaze for a long moment. “Good,” he says at last, and looks away. “Good luck, Bethany. I’ll miss you.” Then he turns away from them, and starts to move off. “Good luck to you as well, Ser Cullen. Kirkwall’s yours, and she’s a mess.”

“I’ll be back, Sunshine,” the dwarf promises Bethany as the rest of the group moves to follow Garrett. “I have _got_ to hear this one.”

Beside him, Bethany smiles. “Next time, Varric,” she promises, and her fingers tighten around Cullen’s hand.

Behind him, his Templars don’t question his announcement. The mages look to him with renewed hope, to Bethany with something akin to awe. There will be consequences, Cullen knows . Those that supported Meredith will use this as a reason to depose him, but this is a new balance that many will welcome: a mage and a Templar have united peacefully, and it is hope that more such peace might follow.

So once her brother passes down the steep stairs out of view, he and Bethany turn towards the rest of their life – together, at last – and begin work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's kind of short and sweet and lacking in plot. I kind of pictured them coming together after Bethany arrives in the Circle and proves to Cullen that there can be such a thing as good mages and Cullen proves that there can be honorable Templars. Things progress from there!
> 
> I like the idea that after Meredith's death, Cullen leads the Templars and Bethany is more or less elected the leader of the remaining mages. I think that together they prove that mages and Templars can trust each other and work together, and that there's hope for a happier, peaceful future. Kirkwall's Circle rises from Meredith's ashes as a powerful example of how everything ought to be under the new Knight-Commander Cullen and his First Enchanter wife Bethany.
> 
> In my head, also, Varric is captured by the Seeker after he snuck back into Kirkwall to see how Bethany managed to marry a Templar and get the whole story straight. :D


End file.
